Biden’s major missile turn complicates potential Western diplomatic thaw with Moscow

Rio de Janeiro
CNN
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A major decision by the United States to allow Ukraine to launch long-range missiles deeper into Russian territory has complicated a potential Western diplomatic thaw with Russia as dozens of world leaders gather this week.

Sunday’s decision was seen by many Western leaders as a way to position Ukraine for success ahead of a change in US leadership, with the incoming president skeptical of continued US aid.

But it also complicated the diplomatic dance leaders attending the G20 summit must engage in as they navigate the bloc’s complex geopolitical dynamics.

Russia “will perceive launches of long-range missiles guided by US military experts as a qualitatively new phase of war by the West,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said during a press conference at the summit, according to Russian state media TASS.

Lavrov attended the G20 in place of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who faced questions about whether he could be arrested for war crimes on international soil. Days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on Brazilian authorities to arrest Putin, the Russian leader said he would skip the summit to avoid disrupting it.

Amid the change in strategy — which Biden had been considering for months — the president and his team sidestepped Lavrov on the ground in Rio.

When Biden missed a photo with other leaders on Monday, there was much speculation that he was trying to avoid being photographed with Lavrov. The White House rejected it, citing a logistical error.

Still, neither Biden nor his delegation held talks with Lavrov or his team, US officials said. And Biden and Lavrov’s fluid schedules meant they weren’t photographed with other world leaders.

But some Western allies, sensing a marked change in the American approach to the conflict when Donald Trump takes office, appear to be weighing a shift in their own attitude toward Moscow.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke to Putin by phone the week before the summit. In his remarks at the end of the summit, Lavrov also hailed the German government’s refusal to send Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine as a “responsible position,” TASS reported.

And at the venue in Rio, French President Emmanuel Macron could be seen shaking Lavrov’s hand as he stood in the row behind him during a “family photo” of the participants.

In Rio, the pending Trump presidency overshadowed almost any discussion of the Ukraine conflict. Leaders here are keenly aware of Trump’s views on the war, but are less sure how that will play out in policy once he takes office.

It is not clear, for example, whether Trump would uphold Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine the long-range capability, a move that NATO leaders had been encouraging for months. Trump’s incoming national security adviser, Florida Rep. Mike Waltz, questioned the decision in an interview Monday.

“It’s another step up the ladder of escalation, and nobody knows where it’s going,” he said on Fox News, adding that he had not been notified by the outgoing administration about the change in policy.

Officials in Rio declined to say whether Biden had raised the issue of the missiles with Trump during their two-hour meeting in the Oval Office last week.

“The two presidents discussed a wide range of issues. We have been quite careful not to read into the details of that conversation. The conversation certainly covered all the major issues of geopolitical importance, but I will not go into the details of that,” said the vice national security advisor Jon Finer.

There had been hope among Western officials for a strong statement condemning Russia’s invasion at the end of the summit. European diplomats in particular made a late-stage push to strengthen the language after Russia’s massive drone and missile strikes on Sunday, according to people familiar with the talks.

Ultimately, the effort was dropped when it appeared that other countries were not on board. The language in the final leadership statement was watered down from previous years, including broad references to “human suffering” and “negative added consequences of the war” without explicit condemnation of Russia.

The Ukraine war generated only one section in the final document, compared to several included in the final document produced by the G20 last year in New Delhi – which itself was watered down from the previous year.

As the summit drew to a close, it was clear that tensions between the US and Russia were only rising. Russia announced as the second day of the summit got under way that it would update its nuclear doctrine to consider aggression by any non-nuclear state – but involving a nuclear country – a joint attack on Moscow.

US officials were not surprised to learn that Moscow had updated its nuclear doctrine following Biden’s decision on long-range missiles.

“Russia had signaled its intention to update its doctrine for several weeks,” a US official said in response to the doctrine update, adding that the US has so far observed no updates to Russia’s nuclear posture – and therefore sees no reason to change the American position.

“This is more of the same irresponsible rhetoric from Russia that we have seen for the past two years,” the official said.

In his closing remarks, Lavrov tried to downplay the change in the fine print of its nuclear stance – instead shifting blame to the West.

“The update to the military doctrine does not add anything that would be different… from the US doctrine or documents on what to do with nuclear weapons,” according to Russian state media.